


Alive.

by salem_student



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Reincarnation, angst/fluff/smutt/fluff sandwich, series 5 canon non compliant, some canon typical suicide talk, with a somewhat detailed reference to a past attempt (again canon typical)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:08:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27595931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salem_student/pseuds/salem_student
Summary: Quentin's alive again. Eliot has something to say to him.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Alive.

The thing about coming back from the dead - coming alive - rebirth - taking a long train to nowhere and somehow arriving - whatever the fuck this shit should be called - is it fucking hurts. Quentin finally got why babies are so pissed when they're born. They at least get the salvation of a mothers tit and at least a few years of unconditional love while they like shit themselves and learn how to think. He's just been born and he just has to deal? Where's the fairness in that. Obviously, diapers don't appeal, but cartoons, sleeping twelve hours a day. Quentin can see the merits.

Instead, his lungs are burning, not burning, freezing. Fuck is this hell? He can't fucking breathe and something is grasping at his arms. Some painfully warm and sharp demon is digging into the flesh of his shoulders and fucking pulling. He thrashes away from his attacker - unseen. Fuck eyes. He can totally open his eyes. He opens them and is immediately blinded by the shards of painful ice-cold water. He still can't see anything, but he can see enough the recognise the demons as hands. To know he's in some white place. Definitely underwater. For some reason, it reminds him of that scene in Harry Potter where Harry had to dive for the sword of Gryffindor. The thought makes him laugh - of course, his hell is shoplifted from a children's novel.

No bubbles when he laughs. Interesting. Oh, wait yeah he's dead. Duh. Except he doesn't feel dead. His lungs are screaming for oxygen. They're spasming in a way that would be royally unfair if he didn’t technically need to breathe. Somehow his arms move of their own accord, and his feet. They kick out fighting away from the hands, up toward the light. Up toward where he can hear panicked voices. In a spray of icy water, he breaks the surface. Fucking god oxygen. Oxygen fucking hurts too.

Treading water, Quentin starts coughing. He feels himself start to sink. Shit fuck no. The water churns and then a warm body. Fuck. Q kicks and screams fighting against this monster come to drag him back down. No use. The monster has him bundled up in his arms, but he's not going down. Up. Across even. Quentin coughs and just about registers the bright red stain on the clean white ice as a warm towel is wrapped around him and he passes the fuck out.

____________

The sound of a hushed argument wakes him up. Of course. He doesn’t open his eyes, just groans and burrows down into the warm pillow. He’s still not convinced he’s not in hell; but god damn it, if he’s being punished, he’s going to get to take advantage of the ridiculously soft pillow. He tries not to listen to the voices, but they’re so obviously right outside the door. He hears “surges” and “not safe” and “Eliot!” in a tight voice that reminds him of Alice, “fuck the surges” and “we brought him back” and “I’m not fucking losing him again” in a low, rapid, angry voice that makes him think of Eliot at the Plover house. Tight and drawn and pissed at the world. But that’s not right. When Eliot is pissed he runs. Quentin giggles - and makes a note at his own delirium - the demons got it wrong. Then unmistakably. Julia. He can’t even hear the words she’s saying, just feel the soothing tone. Quentin sits up.

  
“Julia” He calls out weakly, if - no - Julia didn’t die. Which means - fuck it. Like the pillow, he’ll take comfort where ever he can get it. Louder he tries again “ Julia!”. The effort sends him into a coughing fit that has him bent over the edge of the bed - hacking up what looks like entire chunks of lung. He doesn’t notice the door opening, just feels the warm hands of Julia on his back. Hears her soft comforts. Finally, when the coughing abates he looks up at her.  
“Hey Q,” She says with the lopsided smile that marks every single page of his childhood. He feels it in his heart. Feels it in the same way he felt it when he fell off the climbing frame and broke his arm. Julia helped him back to the adults, spoke for him. He feels it like when he stopped taking his meds, then took all of them and had like an hour of intense high before his heart decided merely pumping in his chest wasn’t enough and experimented with pulsing through all his cells. When she’d found him, staring at his hands, certain that he was having a heart attack - which like he wasn’t not having. Q would not recommend serotonin syndrome. God, why do all of his moments of being alive include pain? But also Julia. A constant beacon of home. He looks at her, feels himself laughing - that same slightly delirious, disconnected feeling.

  
“ I’m alive?”  
“ yeah Q. We got you back.” Then she’s hugging him, holding him tight to her chest and he thinks she’s crying, but that might be him. No. He’s laughing and coughing. Fuck.  
When it stops, he says, “could you not have brought me back with two intact lungs?” wryly. That just earns him a punch in the arm.

“We tried out best.” A low voice says from the doorway. Quentin looks up. Oh. Eliot. Standing there, leaning against the door frame. His face is pinched, eyes crinkled. Soft and concerned, loving - like when Teddy got the fillorian equivalent of mumps and he was convinced he was going to die. Wait no, not loving. Eliot doesn’t love him. He loves Eliot. God, but just for a moment can’t he just believe what he sees in Eliot’s eyes.?  
“El,” He breathes. He doesn’t know what to say, because this is Eliot - no monster wearing his skin. Actual real Eliot, waiting just inside the room. Wait...waiting? Somehow dying has achieved the impossible - he’s managed to create a space that Eliot Waugh doesn’t feel welcome. Quentin disentangles himself from Julia and says quietly to her, “ do you mind if we talk?” She nods, smiles again, wraps him up in a tight quick hug that smells that home and alive alive alive. “I’ll see you later curly Q.”  
She shuts the door on her way out. Eliot and Q are alone. As he walks into the room Quentin notices that he’s leaning on a stick, and is covered in bruises. Like covered in bruises. “ What the fuck happened?” Quentin’s surprised by the force in his voice, anger cutting through his ripped up lungs and forcing his body to comply. He finds himself pushing himself up and almost off the bed. Almost. His anger can only take him so far. Plus Eliot is gently pushing him back towards his pillows.  
He’s smiling, which calms Q a little. Eliot pulls a chair up to the side of the bed and Quentin can’t help but feel a stab of pain that he wouldn’t want to sit next to him. “ you didn’t exactly come gentle out of that good night” He says holding his hands out. At the sight of them, scratched and bruised, Quentin has a visceral memory of the biting cold water, the demon hands pulling him down - pulling him up, Quentin’s nails scraping across the hands, his limbs flying out in panic - making contact.

  
“Oh Eliot, I’m so-”

  
“Don’t worry about it. It was worth it.” There’s a moment of awkward silence, then Eliot pulls a letter out of his pocket. It’s lined as if he’s been unfolding it a lot. Before Quentin has a chance to ask about it Eliot is unfolding it. “ I, um-” His voice is uncharacteristically nervous, “ I wrote you a letter. When I was - well not then, but after. I realised some things, in the, when I was, ugh. When I was possessed I worked out some stuff. I promised I’d tell you, but then I couldn’t, because - so I wrote it down. But now I can tell you. So, if you’ll let me?” Eliot trails off. Stunned, Quentin just nods.


End file.
